Conductor Matt Catingub teaches a BigBand/Jazz music class to Hughes Middle School students as part of the Long Beach Symphony’s school arts program. He offered the students insights into becoming a professional musician.
Thomas R. Cordova — Staff Photographer

Arts Council for Long Beach: 350 Elm Ave., Long Beach. 562-435-2787, artslb.org.

LONG BEACH >> The day before directing a professional orchestra in front of thousands at the Long Beach Arena, conductor Matt Catingub was up early standing in front of about two dozen young musicians in a small middle school band room.

The Hughes Middle School students were far less experienced than the members of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra he would direct the next day as part of their Pops! concert series, but Catingub was still excited to hear the young music students perform songs like “Santa Baby.”

“That was the pop of its day,” he told them, explaining the importance of consistently listening to the type of music they want to learn and encouraging them to continue to explore music. “I started out just like you,” he said before joining them on the song with his own saxophone.

The accomplished musician was at the school performing with the kids as part of a long running partnership between the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra and the Long Beach Unified School District to augment its arts education curriculum. The Symphony is one of numerous Long Beach arts-related nonprofit organizations that team up with schools on a routine basis to provide in-class lessons with musicians, artists or theater professionals, free admission to local shows, museum tours and even help with math, science and language lessons through art projects.

“It’s part of our mission,” said Kelly Ruggirello, executive director of the Long Beach Symphony. Nonprofits that serve social needs and provide things like food or shelter are extraordinary important, she noted. But nonprofits that provide exposure to the arts are just as essential for the community, she said.

“We believe the arts give food for the soul,” she said.

The partnerships with nonprofit organizations such as the Symphony and others like the Carpenter Center, International City Theatre, Dramatic Results, the Museum of Latin American Art, the Arts Council for Long Beach and others are crucial to maintain comprehensive arts and music programs despite statewide cuts in the past few years, school officials say.

“There’s a history within the district of the arts community members and organizations collaborating with the district knowing how important this is. The district can only go so far and then the community workers working together as a family is what creates the vibrancy we have in the arts community in Long Beach,” said James Petri, the music curriculum leader for the school district. Petri is one of three people who run the district’s visual and performing arts curriculum, which is divided into music, arts and physical education.

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Classes offered include ballet, modern dance and play production. Music education includes beginning strings, woodwinds and brass classes as well as chorus, guitar, piano and jazz band classes like the one Catingub directed recently. Visual arts classes begin in middle school when students can learn ceramics, architectural design and photography.

“The arts are instrumental in getting the early creativity going in a student. To plant a seed that’s going to give them an opportunity to experience creativity themselves,” Petri said.

Students need to take a number of arts courses before they are eligible to graduate from high school. But like other school districts, Long Beach’s offerings have been affected by statewide cuts through the past few years. Since 2008, for example, the district’s elementary music teachers have been reduced from 31 to 21 instructors, according to Petri.

The district’s third grade instrumental program was recently suspended because the schools couldn’t afford to provide instruments to all of the students. Instead, the program was pushed back a year and now begins in the fourth grade, Petri said.

Through all the budget cuts, however, Long Beach has valued the arts and has tried to keep as much as possible because they see the value in the arts, Petri said. Part of valuing the arts is the district’s openness in working with nonprofits.

“I think our kids would definitely have a deficit in that aspect of their education if it wasn’t for these nonprofits,” said Judy Ross, executive director of the Long Beach Nonprofit Partnership.

And there’s a lot more at stake than just creating a new generation of art fans and artists. According to studies, missing out on arts education can also affect other aspects of a student’s education, especially for at-risk students. A 2012 report by the National Endowment for the Arts showed that eighth-graders from low socioeconomic status who had high levels of arts education from kindergarten through elementary school had higher test scores in science and writing than students who had lower levels of arts education. Among more affluent students, the study found college-going rates were higher among those who had engaged in “arts-rich experiences.”

Organizations like the Symphony invest a considerable slice of their budgets in these partnerships.

For nearly 30 years the Symphony has been providing music education programs to the district; this fiscal year the organization’s total budget for its Education & Community Outreach Programs is $170,000, which will fund arts programs that serve more than 24,000 students a year in grades K-12. The programs span all of the elementary schools in the district with an emphasis on second through fifth grades, including visits from Symphony musicians to classrooms, visits to the Long Beach Performing Arts Center to see a Symphony concert and for middle school orchestra students, the chance to see an LBSA rehearsal.

The Carpenter Center meanwhile spends about $90,000 of its annual $1.8 million budget exposing Long Beach students to the arts with offerings such as its 15-year-old Classroom Connections program. Classroom Connections is a three-part approach to spark student’s interest in dance, music and theater by connecting touring artists with classrooms.

The program begins with an instructor paid for by the center who visits elementary school classrooms to tell them about the performer. The instructor then returns to the classrooms on a different day with the performer or a member of the show for a sort of workshop that will give them an idea of what they can expect later. The kids are then taken to the Carpenter Center where they see the performance with other elementary school students that take part in the program. The Classroom Connections performances are closed to the public.

“We find that this is the most effective way to reach kids, almost on a one-on-one basis,” said Michele Roberge, executive director of the Carpenter Center. About 3,000 students participate in the program each year.

Meanwhile, the International City Theatre helps third grade students in the district write and perform a mini play to spark their interest in theater and to get them to think creatively. Last year ICT officials made 405 classroom visits as part of the program.

“If our youth are not taught to think creatively, our nation will not be able to compete. If you can’t think creatively, you don’t have artists but you don’t have scientists, researchers, inventors, or entrepreneurs either,” caryn desai, ICT’s artistic director and producer, said in an email.

It’s not just the well-known Long Beach organizations that are helping the school district.

With a small staff of eight people, the Long Beach based Dramatic Results nonprofit reaches out to 1,200 kids per year by concentrating on four of the district’s neediest schools. The instruction is part of the classroom curriculum and not an add-on or supplemental event, said Christi Wilkins, executive director of Dramatic Results.

“We are hands-on classroom-based instruction,” she said.

Their instruction focuses on increasing math and language skills by having students do things like create reed baskets to learn measurement, geometry and algebraic formulas or folding origami to learn design, physics and engineering and helping them create theater scripts to learn language skills.

Naomi Norwick, the instrumental music director at Hughes, whose jazz class got to meet Catingub before his performance with the Long Beach Symphony, said the students were excited about the visit from a professional conductor.

“It’s exciting for them to get that opportunity to work with a professional musician and have his insights into the professional world,” she said.

About the Author

Richard Guzman covers Arts and Entertainment for the Long Beach Press-Telegram, where he writes about art, theater, music and food. He is a graduate of CSU Northridge with a degree in journalism. Richard grew up in Los Angeles and has written about food, pop culture and art in the area. He has two young children and in his spare time enjoys riding his motorcycle and hiking. Reach the author at Richard.Guzman@presstelegram.com
or follow Richard on Twitter: @Richword.